The $9.85 Million Ice Cream Sundae You Can Easily Recreate At Home For A Fraction Of The Price

In the world of expectedly exorbitant menu items, the typical tab inflators are the usual suspects: things like Kobe beef, white and black truffles, and saffron. Fish eggs merit quite the markup, too, which is why it's best to skip the caviar at restaurants and enjoy it at home, instead. These are actual foodstuffs that you're paying to, you know, eat. But in the world of unexpectedly exorbitant menu items, wild prices are typically due to some other attention grab. And this very kind of stunt is precisely what has allowed Arnaud's restaurant in New Orleans to price an enhanced Strawberries Arnaud at nearly $10 million.

Strawberries Arnaud is the light, lovely combination of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, port wine sauce, and the titular fruit. A standard version appears on the restaurant's regular dessert menu for $12. The "main ingredient" in the modest upgrade is, as you've probably gleaned by now, a 10.06 carat diamond ring. This particular ring was harvested from M.S. Rau, a fine art, antique, and jewelry dealer in the French Quarter. Costco has been known to carry the occasional similarly sized bauble for the relative bargain of $420K, should you be looking for a dupe. And you can recreate the sundae itself for even less cash, too.

Now, you probably already know how to compose a sundae, and, honestly, any configuration of the frozen treat would be welcome. But Arnaud's does contain one unique element aside from the bling. You'll need to make its sauce in advance by boiling a cup of port, a cup of red wine (they use a Burgundy), a sliced lime, half a sliced orange, half a cup of sugar, and a cinnamon stick, per the restaurant's website. You'll strain and let it cool before serving so as not to melt the ice cream down like an affogato.

Arnaud's advises that you scoop the ice cream into Champagne glasses. Just like flutes aren't ideal for actual Champagne, the restaurant uses something that more closely resembles coupes. Pretty sundae dishes would also be appropriate. Next, you'll top the ice cream with sliced strawberries, then pour the sauce over the strawberries, followed by the whipped cream, another berry to garnish, and the classic old sprig of mint. Twenty-four karat edible gold leaf finishes the multimillion dollar edition of the dessert. You can pick up a few sheets of Gold Leaf Company's edible 24K sheets for about $5. It would also be a hoot to just crown the whole thing with a ring pop, but there are similarly affordable accouterments that would (less hilariously) signal luxury. Shiny gold pearl sprinkles nod to precious metals, while sugar diamonds approximate the real deal, with the added benefit of being digestible.